The Case for Building Public Housing That Doesn't Suck - And Lots of It

May 2, 2018                         By: Eli Day

An interview with the co-author of an ambitious plan to tackle America's housing crisis.

Housing has been one of the single greatest vehicles for building wealth in the United States. Yet the ranks of Americans who can’t find affordable housing are swelling.

Although the problem goes back decades, the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008 and the recession that followed made it impossible to ignore how dysfunctional America’s housing landscape has become. Today, nearly half of renters pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing. After declining during the Obama years, the number of homeless people rose to over 550,000 in 2017. According to the Urban Institute, there is only enough “adequate, affordable and available” housing for 46 percent of the roughly 11.8 million extremely low-income households. Nevertheless, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson is touting legislation that would triple rents for some of the poorest public housing residents.......................Read More